Your Guardians of Wild are proud to share that overnight on Monday May 13th, three-year old snow leopard Jita gave birth to two cubs after a 97-day pregnancy.
Jita and her new cubs are NOT currently visible to guests visiting the Toronto Zoo, but updates will be shared in the days and weeks to come about how and when guests will be able to view these little snowballs.
Jita’s cubs, sired by nine-year-old Pemba, came into the world following a few hours of labour. Wildlife Care, watching on remote cameras, observed her laboured breathing as well as circling and rolling (signs of impending birth) around 7:30pm. The first cub was born at 7:45pm, followed by the arrival of her second cub in the early hours of Tuesday, May 14th.
Jita is doing very well as a first-time mother and is diligently nursing, grooming, and cuddling her “snowballs.” Her Wildlife Care team is monitoring the new family closely via CCTV cameras to minimize any disturbance, and will be closely observing the development of the cubs. More information will be shared as it becomes available.
The elusive snow leopard, also known as the “ghost cat”, is not often spotted in the wild and is listed as Vulnerable on the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) list. The Toronto Zoo participates in the snow leopard Species Survival Plan® (SSP), a cooperative breeding program amongst AZA accredited North American facilities. Through the SSP, we maintain a sustainable population of snow leopards in human care to preserve their genetic diversity and allow them to serve as ambassadors for their wild counterparts.
Through the Toronto Zoo Wildlife Conservancy’s Adopt an Animal program, you can symbolically adopt a Toronto Zoo snow leopard and become a Guardian of Wild. Funds raised through the program support the ongoing conservation and research efforts of your Toronto Zoo, helping to save endangered species. For more information or to adopt, please visit https://www.tzwcadopt.ca/.
We have has the rather stomach churning experience of watching stars of the GOP establishment descend on Donald Trump’s criminal trial this week to defy a judge’s order and claim that the justice system is corrupt because it deigns to hold their Dear leader to account for his crimes.
If you want to see how this degradation of the rule of law is playing out in everyday life, witness this shocking move in Texas.
You may recall the case of Garrett Foster, an Air Force veteran who was attending a Black Lives Matter protest in 2020 and was, as is legal in Texas openly carrying a rifle. A man named Daniel Perry drove his car into the protesters and Foster (who was white) confronted him without raising his gun, Perry shot him five times.
The case had everything Republicans love: A peaceful protest with people exercising their First Amendment rights. A veteran lawfully exercising his Second Amendment right. And before the murder the killer had been searching the internet for young girls and sending sexually explicit texts to a minor.
The only problem was the protest itself: It was a Black Lives Matter protest.
And so Daniel Perry—a groomer who was convicted of murder by a jury of his peers—became a conservative cause celebré.
The justice system worked in this case. Perry was convicted and sentenced to 25 years in prison (which seems low to me considering it’s Texas which usually loves to inflict the death penalty.)
Last explains why Perry did this:
First off, Perry is a racist. And when I say “racist” I don’t mean in the Archie Bunker sense. This is a guy who *hates* black people so much that he frequently talked about killing them for sport. The prosecution presented a mountain of evidence on this point and I won’t quote any of it here, but you can read about it if you like.
Second, there is ample evidence that Perry had been working himself up to seeking out a Black Lives Matter protest for the purpose of killing. Radley Balko has the full rundown on this here.
For instance, here is a something Perry wrote in June of 2020: “I might have to kill a few people on my way to work, they are rioting outside my apartment complex.”
At trial, prosecutors presented an exchange Perry had with a friend in which he had mused on how to create a situation in which he would be justified to kill:
Perry speculated about how he might get away with such a killing – by claiming self-defense, as he is now doing. Prosecutors presented a Facebook Messenger chat between Perry and a friend, Michael Holcomb, which occurred two weeks before he shot Foster. In it, Perry argued that shooting protesters was legal if it was in self-defense. Holcomb, who was called to the stand Wednesday afternoon, seemed to try to talk Perry down. “Aren’t you a CDL holder too?” he asked, referring to the men’s licenses to carry concealed handguns. “We went through the same training … Shooting after creating an event where you have to shoot, is not a good shoot.”
And yes, he is also a man who has been shown to be stalking underage girls. He is a sick, criminal piece of work who killed a man in cold blood.
And yet, Gov. Abbott pardoned him yesterday. Full pardon, the man is now free. His death cult MAGA constituents are thrilled.
Can you believe it?
As Last notes, that’s not the end of the story. Texas has a law designed to remove locally-elected DA’s ostensibly because they are too lenient on crimes. Guess what?
While pardoning Perry, Gov. Abbott claimed that Garza had “demonstrated unethical and biased misuse of his office in prosecuting Daniel Scott Perry.”
Texas Republicans are not content to allow Perry’s murder of Garrett Foster. They also want to send a message that even using the law to bring charges against members of the ingroup who kill members of the outgroup is verboten.
This is MAGA America, folks. The rule of law under these monsters will be the law that protects them and punishes their enemies, period. We’re seeing it play out with the national GOP which wants to throw the book at Democrats and calls any attempt to hold them accountable for their crimes a rigged, witch hunt. An we’re seeing it play out in states where MAGA racists are allowed to kill with impunity.
And, as Tom pointed out this morning, this extends all the way to the Supreme Court where we have a Supreme Court Justice flying an upside down American flag signalling sympathy with the insurrection back in 2021. This idea of “rule of law for me but not for thee” runs very deep in the American right.
Check this out:
Maria Bartiromo argues that SCOTUS should give Trump immunity "to make sure people understand you can't just get into office and start prosecuting your political opponent." GOP Rep. Michael Waltz responds by suggesting members of Congress should also have immunity. pic.twitter.com/XuoG0fkHpc
Dairy farmers are hiding likely bird flu cases from government officials, coping with the virus’s symptoms in their herds while avoiding testing, one dairy industry representative told NOTUS.
Already distrustful of government, worried about economic and reputational damage and increasingly skeptical of public health officials following the COVID-19 pandemic, many farmers see no reason to test their cattle or engage with federal officials, Rick Naerebout, the CEO of the Idaho Dairymen’s Association, said. “Nationwide, the vast majority of cases are not reported,” Naerebout said. “Dairymen understand they have it based on the symptoms, but they don’t get a confirmation. They’re just managing through the disease.”
Cattle have tested positive in 42 herds as of May 10, but the actual number of affected herds is unknown. The USDA now requires a negative test for cattle to move across state lines, but no federal agency can mandate testing on the farms or go onto the farms without permission from the owners. Government requests to test farmers’ cows have mostly been ignored.
“You have to understand how they approach the world. They take on so much risk every day with what they do in their operation,” Naerebout said. “They are very reluctant on this issue or any other issue to have the government involved.”
Naerebout is in regular conversation with farmers whose cows are exhibiting symptoms across the state, and those farmers are choosing not to test their cows because a positive test would alert regulators, he said.
More than a dozen farmers and industry groups did not respond to NOTUS’ phone calls. The mistrust, stemming from a desire to protect business and a fiercely independent culture, has become increasingly partisan in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.
One raw milk dairy farmer in Texas told NOTUS they had never heard of the bird flu. “You must be listening to CNN or something. Fake news,” they said.
MAGA is a death cult. These people are going to get us all killed.
I don’t know if this bird flu outbreak is going to be the next frightening virus but something is. And these people have been trained to believe that they cannot trust scientists and should only believe Donald Trump and whatever right wing media they are sampling on a given day. It’s going to cause huge problems down the road. God help us when the next pandemic hits. And it will…
Things are out of control in the Oversight Committee as there have been repeated outbursts from Marjorie Taylor Greene. The hearing has been tied up after Greene insulted the appearance of another member.
Watching Raskin’s face and then Crockett’s as she seeks a point of order to see whether it’s appropriate to comment on Marge’s “bleach blonde bad built butch body” after Greene talked about her eyelashes is the best part. pic.twitter.com/kTzztlSFm7
It’s almost quaint now to look back at the shock we all felt at presidential candidate Donald Trump attacking the judge presiding in the Trump University fraud lawsuit as biased because he was Latino and Trump was talking about building a border wall. Most Americans assumed that it would be impossible that such a disrespectful and, frankly, racist person could be elected in the 21st century but as it turned out that was just a preview of many such attacks to come. (That lawsuit eventually settled for $25 million)
Because Trump is such an inveterate lawbreaker, he has been the subject of many legal cases over the years and biographers and armchair psychologists have speculated that his strategy has always been to publicly denigrate the judges and the prosecutors in these cases due to his father’s admonition that one must always fight with everything they have. But it’s just as likely that he’s following the advice of his mentor, the odious attorney Roy Cohn who has been called “one of the most reviled men in American history.” If anything it was Cohn who pulled Trump out from under his father’s shadow.
In fact, Trump’s current troubles and many in his past stem from his weird relationship with Cohn, who taught him that there are no rules and no limits to what he can get away with if he has the chutzpah to challenge the very concept of reality itself, daring people to disbelieve his lies or risk destruction. It’s the ethos of the bully and the gangster and despite all the drama in his life Trump’s gotten away with all of it, eventually becoming the most powerful man in the world with a full-fledged cult following of tens of millions of people. Cohn’s student learned his lessons well.
The case unfolding in New York these past few weeks centers on another of Trump’s lawyers, Michael Cohen, who Trump saw as a low rent Roy Cohn who would carry out the dirty business Trump feels entitled to engage in without accountability. He eagerly took on the job of Trump’s legal henchman, never questioning the ethics or morals of what he was asked to do and when asked how he could have done that he testified this week that he was “knee deep in the cult of Donald Trump.” The trial has shown how much Cohen yearned for Trump’s approval and how little Trump respected him in return.
Cohen is a broken man today, loathed by the press with which he had a hostile relationship as Trump’s hatchet man and humiliated before the entire country as a liar and a loser on the witness stand, even as he provides the testimony that corroborates evidence that his former boss broke the law. Michael Cohen paid a high price for his loyalty to Donald Trump.
We’ve also been reminded in this trial of another of Trump’s lawyers, the former US Attorney and mayor of New York City, Rudy Giuliani. Once a front runner himself for the Republican presidential nomination, and esteemed by many as a hero for his leadership of the city after 9/11, Giuliani is now one of Trump’s co-defendants in the Georgia election interference trial, has been held liable for $148 million for his defamation of two election workers, is facing disbarment and was fired from his radio show. This week he left the judge overseeing his bankruptcy aghast as he’s completely non-compliant and has not followed any of the court’s instructions.
Rudy Giuliani has been completely destroyed by his loyalty to Donald Trump, which he maintains until this day despite the fact that Trump has not helped him financially and would have no power to pardon him if he were to become president again. All of this is a result of the dirty work he did on behalf of Trump’s Big Lie.
Two other lawyers, Jeffrey Clark (who appeared at the courthouse in support of Trump on Thursday) and John Eastman have had their reputations shredded and their lives upended willingly plotting with Donald Trump to overturn the election in 2020. Both men are co-defendants with Trump in the Georgia case as well and Eastman has been disbarred and was fired from jobs at Chapman University and the University of Colorado over his involvement in the January 6th plot. Loyal legal soldiers and Trump co-defendants, Kenneth Chesebro and Sidney Powell, have also been destroyed by their involvement with Trump’s schemes. Like the others, they were thrilled to be part of Trump’s nefarious plans and are paying the price for it today.
Giuliani, Eastman, Clark, Powell and Chesebro are all unindicted co-conspirators in the federal case against Donald Trump brought by Special Counsel Jack Smith. What an ignominious end to their legal careers. And it’s all in service of Donald Trump.
Trump has more lawyers, of course, although it’s not as easy to find them as it once was. Many can obviously see the writing on the wall. (The running joke is that MAGA actually stands for Make Attorneys Get Attorneys.) Luckily for the newer hires, the campaign is paying the bills these days so they don’t have the same worries as Trump’s previous attorneys about getting paid — yet.
Trump seems to be very attached to his attorney Alina Habba who defended him the NY civil fraud trial and the Carroll defamation cases, all of which he lost. They frequently travel together and she has attended the NY hush money trial as moral support as well. Another of his favorites is Christina Bobb, recently indicted in the Arizona fake electors case, who has been hired by the Republican National Committee to head their election integrity unit.
His top lawyer in both the Mar-a-lago and NY case, Todd Blanche, is a former prosecutor with a good reputation who has thrown his lot in with Trump entirely, moving his practice and his family down to Florida and is reportedly very “broey” with Trump. So far he hasn’t broken any laws in his defense of Trump so his reputation and standing as a lawyer remains intact.
Just as all those Republican office holders who are making the ritual pilgrimage to that Manhattan Courthouse to demonstrate their fealty to Donald Trump as Michael Cohen once did, so too should his current lawyers .
His first lawyer Roy Cohn taught Trump everything he knows about being a ruthless, belligerent, con man who can get away with murder with a take-no-prisoners, win at all costs attitude. And Trump loved him for it. But when Cohn got AIDS (and lied about it claiming it was liver cancer) and the walls started closing in on him for tax evasion and he was disbarred, Trump abandoned his mentor without a second thought. Cohn’s secretary Susan Bell told Michael Kruse of Politico that he “dropped him like a hot potato, he really did.”
If he would do that to his mentor and muse he would do it to anyone. Just look at the broken human wreck named Rudy Giuliani.
Only a fraction of American adults are stock investors, but it’s a large fraction (61%). Many of the more heavily invested will be cashing dividend checks while claiming the economy has gone bust under Joe Biden. So it goes.
The news has yet to trickle down to others that, yeah, people’s lives are improving under Joe Biden, as Michael Tomasky wrote this week:
Politico and Morning Consult asked respondents a series of questions about all the major economic legislation Biden has signed. Majorities know little or nothing at all about the infrastructure bill, the CHIPS act, the American Rescue Plan, and the Inflation Reduction Act. And get this: While 40 percent said Biden has done more than Trump on infrastructure, 37 percent said Trump had done more. In January, NBC found that Trump has a 22-point advantage over Biden on the question of whom voters trust more with the economy—up 15 points from the same poll in 2020.
[…]
It’s largely a media problem. The chunk of the country (and it’s a large chunk) for whom “the media” means Fox News, their local Sinclair affiliate, and maybe a right-wing talk radio station will never hear that Biden did anything good. Instead, they’ll often hear lies, or gross distortions of the truth, or pitiful excuses that lead them to draw false conclusions.
An MSNBC commenter just remarked that Trump and his supporters will be taking credit for the Dow hitting 40,000 for the first time. The Market (bless its holy name) is chalking up records in anticipation of Trump being president one year from now, dontcha know.
This story is literally nowhere on the Washington Post or NY Times home pages. Nowhere. (Lead story in WSJ.) pic.twitter.com/l69wlq9Wfm
— Dan Froomkin (PressWatchers.org) (@froomkin) May 16, 2024
Business Insider explains that “inflation is keeping the cost of living high in many US cities, and astronomical home prices are preventing aspiring homeowners from buying.” Some gotta accentuate the negative.
With the election six months away, Business Insider looked at President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump’s plans for eight major economic categories that affect Americans’ daily lives: domestic manufacturing, higher education, healthcare, housing, labor, taxes, tariffs, and trade.
“President Biden is going to keep fighting for working families — lowering the costs of prescription drugs, housing, and childcare; investing in our future; supporting workers and small businesses; and making sure big corporations and the wealthy to pay their fair share,” Lael Brainard, the director of the National Economic Council, told BI in a statement.
Business Insider reached out to Trump’s campaign team but didn’t receive a response.
Photo obtained by The New York Times shows an inverted American flag outside at the residence of Supreme Court Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. on Jan. 17, 2021.
Is anyone keeping a list? A list of the “I know you are but what am I?” behaviors of which the right accuses its adversaries while indulging in same with gusto?
There must be a listing somewhere, but I’m too tired of the BS to go looking just now.
The breaking news Thursday night was a photo of an upside down American flag flown outside the home of Supreme Court Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., in Alexandria, Va. on January 17, 2021. Days after the violent assault on the U.S. Capitol by MAGA extremists on January 6 and three days before Joe Biden’s inauguration as Donald Trump’s replacement. Alito blames his wife.
Election rigging? Death threats? Political violence? Hating America?
Via Reuters: “Comments calling for violence against judges handling Donald Trump’s legal cases regularly appear on the pro-Trump website Patriots.Win, typically in response to posts echoing his attacks on the jurists’ integrity.”
Upside down display of the American flag is a considered a signal of distress. Donald Trump’s Stop the Steal cult appropriated the signal as a sign of alarm that a Democrat was about to occupy the Oval Office in his place. It is unclear how many days it flew outside Alito’s home, The New York Times reports. Nor is it clear why it took over three years for the neighbor who shot the photo to reveal it to the press. But it’s not a hard guess.
Those neighbors who did not report the flag knew exactly what kind of person Alito is, and knew that Alito and his wife were linking themselves publicly to violent extremists by displaying that flag. That's why the neighbors *feared reprisals* and stayed silent. https://t.co/ahb4SjTJjS
The Times reports (gift link), “The half-dozen neighbors who saw the flag, or knew of it, requested anonymity because they said they did not want to add to the contentiousness on the block and feared reprisal.”
Alito’s neighbors share that fear of reprisal with jurors serving in the Trump criminal trial in Manhattan. Should these anonymous Americans rule to convict Trump, they will be looking over their shoulders for years to come and fear doxxing by MAGA cultists and right-wing media personalities. Death threats could be the least of their worries for having done their civic duty. Trump, his allies in Congress, and the Trump cult call for executions for their enemies. This is what “great again” looks like under Trump’s red hats and Red Tie Brigade.
But Joe Biden is destroying the country. (There’s another for the list.) Don’t ask how. You’ll out yourself as an America-hater. Samuel Alito outed himself long ago.
Update: Greg Sargent notes how if the Red Tie Brigade “were merely criticizing the prosecution on the facts and the law in substantive terms, it would be one thing. But here they are attacking the judge, his family, the witnesses, and the line prosecutors as actors in a fundamentally illegitimate proceeding.” Their action “threatens to sabotage public confidence in the justice system’s integrity and makes it harder for good-faith actors to play their roles in it without fear or favor.”
Labor Historian Eric Loomis was asked to give a letter grade to Joe Biden’s administration on labor policy. Biden makes the honor roll:
Joe Biden has pledged repeatedly to go further than any of his predecessors with his support for U.S. labor rights.
“I intend to be the most pro-union president leading the most pro-union administration in American history,” Biden said at a White House meeting in September 2021 that brought together ordinary workers, labor leaders and government officials.
He has expressed this intention many times, sometimes clarifying his goals.
He goes on to lay out all the positive things Biden has done for labor and raises the one case (the railroad union’s sick leave demands — which they later mostly got) as the single bad policy. It’s quite astonishing and I honestly didn’t realize most of it. He also analyzes the context in which he’s operating with the congress and the courts and it’s actually even more astonishing. Great read.
Anybody telling you “this is normal” is hindering you from prioritising more time with your loved ones as the planet overheats.pic.twitter.com/w1EiVemuNm
Why are we seeing flooding all over the world now?
Boil some soup. Pour into a bowl. Wrap bowl in Saran. Watch condensation form, & drip down. Welcome to our CO2-filled atmosphere.
Kids, there is nothing on this earth more important than doing everything possible to get the governments around the world to take action on climate change. I’m old and I’ll be dead before too long. But this is going to change everything for the worse in the world you are going to be living in. This is literally an existential threat to life on earth.
Outside Trump Trial: Nearly 100 pink penis shaped balloons with faces of Judge Juan Merchan, Alvin Bragg, Jack Smith and Judge Arthur Engoron taped to them released in front of NYC courthouse.
The gathered GOP congressional allies of Donald Trump took no questions from the assembled press. They each made statements attacking a collection of Judge Merchan’s family, Michael Cohen & Stormy Daniels.
Maybe it’s just me but I feel as if things are hurtling even more out of control than they have been. The shamelessness is turning into recklessness. The question is whether anyone cares.
